Devotion
by Arostine
Summary: Insomnia makes you reflect, and of course you think of him. You are loyal to him. You love him unconditionally. And you would kill yourself if he asked you to.  Alternate character interpretations, Rishid-centric, pre-Battle City.


**Title: **Devotion

**Disclaimer:** YuGiOh is the intellectual property of Kazuki Takahashi

**Summary: **Insomnia makes you reflect, and of course you think of him. You have loyalty. Unconditional love. And you would kill yourself if he asked you to. (Character study of Rishid through his thoughts on Malik, pre-Battle City)

**Notes: **

(1): Italics represent Rishid's memories, which are written in past instead of present tense.

(2): This is probably obvious, but you=Rishid.

**==o==**

Nights are long at sea.

And sometimes you lie awake.

And think of him.

But that's nothing new, because you always think of him. When you helped to steal this boat, you thought of him. When you shot the underling who would betray his destiny, you thought of him. And as your racing thoughts chase sleep away, you try to reach back in your memory to a time when you didn't think of him.

There must have been…once…

Sometimes you lie awake, long after he's gone to sleep, alone with the rocking of the boat and the mumbles of the mind-slaves and your memories.

_Before he came, _you remember_, you thought of __her__ instead of him. Your almost-mother. It was quieter in the tomb then, and your almost-mother's face was kind. Sometimes she'd sit by your bed at night and tell you stories. Once she told you a story in which you became an Ishtar. But the man who was not your father heard her, and then she didn't tell you stories anymore. _

_You were born unwanted, and remained so. _

_But she was your world, before he became your world. She pulled you out of abandonment and rescued you from certain death, and secretly, furtively, she loved you. And you loved her. _

_And because you loved her, you served her, served her and your almost-sister and the man who was not your father. The man who was not your father took every opportunity to remind you that you were not her son, you were her slave, but you didn't see why this was supposed to bother you. You knew you were her slave, and that was alright, because it meant you belonged to her._

_With her last words, she gave you away. And in that moment, you became his. _

_You are not your own, nor will you ever be. _

Sometimes your restlessness pulls you out of bed, out of your cabin and into his. It's quiet in there, bright and warm, because he sleeps with a stranger and a nightlight. You keep silent, because if you woke them he'd fly into a rage and grab the Rod or his gun and scream at you to leave him alone, even though you both know that's the last thing he wants.

Sometimes you watch him sleep to make sure he's still breathing.

Because no matter how many people he enslaves or plans he forges or lovers he takes, you will always see through him. You'll always see the child desperately pretending to be an adult, the whirlwind putting up a front of control. There is a mad sort of innocence behind his eyes that only you can see. Occasionally you remember that you're both criminals, and the thought is both mildly startling and completely ridiculous.

_You remember when you first saw the cracks beneath the surface. He was four years old and split in two. Not as completely as he is now, of course, but the beginnings of the cracks were there, the first fractures along the rift. _

_Sometimes he killed animals._

_Sometimes he didn't, of course. Sometimes he was sweet and kind and made his sister necklaces out of flowers. About half the time, when you walked into his room, you saw him systematically stringing petals on a chain. The other half of the time, you saw him methodically pulling the legs off a live beetle. _

_It got worse as he got older. _

_He started stepping on scorpions. At first, you didn't notice anything strange about this. Everyone had to kill scorpions when they found them; it was a necessary part of desert life. The other tombkeepers smiled when they saw him do it, saw their prince lower himself to such a mundane chore. _

_But you were his shadow, and you saw further. _

_He sought the scorpions out, sometimes searching for hours until he found them. And if he thought no one was watching, he took his sandals off before he killed them. And he was…__practicing__, you later realized. He was looking for just the slowest speed and just the closest angle that he could step at without getting stung. He took his sandals off because the risk was what made it exciting. And as he took them off, he smiled. He smiled because he thought no one could see him. He smiled because the killing was a game. _

_Then one day, he stepped on a cobra. _

_You were standing right in front of him. The ball you were playing with bounced away. He cried out, and you ran to him. And then you met his eyes._

_They were cold. _

_And in that instant, you knew he only screamed because he was expected to. You knew he had stepped on the snake because he was testing you. You realized that every time he laughed at a crushed scorpion, he had known you were there. And that…part of him, that dark, dark part that made death a game and torture an art…that part knew you now. It knew you wouldn't refuse him, that you couldn't deny him. It knew you wouldn't stop him. _

_You stabbed the cobra. He smiled at you, and then passed out. _

Sometimes it's not concern that keeps you awake on those long nights at sea. Some nights, you toss and turn and struggle to put your finger on what exactly it is that's keeping you from sleep. You're so accustomed to hiding your emotions that at times you even hide them from yourself.

Particularly the unwanted ones.

Because about three hours into the tossing and the turning, once the noises from his cabin finally subside and all that's left is the sound of the waves on the side of the ship, you realize what exactly it is you're feeling.

It's _anger._

And with this realization, you begin to feel the much more familiar gnawing sensation of guilt and horror, but even then, the anger doesn't go away. It's bitter and vengeful and tastes like bile, and you realize that this is how he feels _all the time. _And you hate yourself for it, because it feels simultaneously so much like theft and so much like betrayal.

You are stealing yourself from him.

But what right does he have to own you anyway? Is it not hypocrisy to fight for his freedom through your enslavement? Why do you always have to be the one to shoot the guard, to tie the hostage, to _obey_? To take the fall…

You remember the cobra.

_He lay on his bed, moaning in pain, as the man who was not your father screamed and beat you. He was yelling something about tearing your heart out…but you didn't even hear him. Too many emotions ran through your mind, anger chief among them. You felt dirty. Used._

_You __were__ your loyalty, and nothing more. You had to be, because you would never be anything else, would never be an Ishtar; the man who was not your father had seen to that. But Malik had twisted your loyalty, used it against you, tested its limits and seen that it was limitless. He saw that you would always try to save him, even from himself. _

_And how dare he? How dare he split himself in two and demand that you kill one half to save the other? How dare he make your loyalty impossible? _

_Because without your loyalty, you really were nothing. _

_You went to his room and stood over him. His little forehead was sweaty and his eyebrows were drawn taut with pain. _

_And just for that single instant, you hated him. _

_All you remember is a sudden feeling of sheer rage, the feeling of __nothingness__, of __meaninglessness__. You were not an Ishtar, you were not a servant, you were not loyal. You were __nothing__. _

_And if you had to betray him, you wouldn't do it by halves. _

_It suddenly occurred to you that you could kill him. It suddenly occurred to you that a boy who stepped on scorpions and cobras perhaps wasn't afraid to die. _

_Perhaps he __wanted__ to die. _

_The knife was in your hand before you finished the thought. _

_A shard of hope pricked through your anger. Perhaps by killing him, you could save him from himself. Perhaps by killing him, you could restore your loyalty. Perhaps by killing him, you could become your own. _

_But then he opened his eyes, his tortured, soft, innocent eyes, and spoke to you in beautiful lies._

"_Brother…"_

_And you were lost. _

Sometimes you lie awake in sympathy. You know that he's awake too, and you simply can't sleep if he's not sleeping. Most of the time, you end up listening to him have sex, which is more than a little disturbing for you. Still, you don't begrudge him his lovers, because you know he needs the distraction.

But sometimes, the noises that come from his room are whispers. And then you know that something's wrong, because while he may scream for his lovers, he doesn't _speak _to them. His whispers are in the old language, the tombkeepers' language. He's speaking to the darker part of himself.

The part to which you owe no loyalty.

_As he neared his tenth birthday and the initiation ceremony, his mood-swings worsened. You tried to save him from his fate, to take the torture yourself, but the man who was not your father would not allow it. _

_Malik thanked you for trying. You didn't respond. Your actions were inevitable, practically beyond your control. He would always ask you to sacrifice yourself for him, and you would always agree. You would kill yourself if he asked you to. _

_You knew that the darker part of him would ask you sometime soon. _

_As the initiation ceremony drew ever closer, you became conscious of a growing sense of anticipation. At first, you thought it was just Malik's dread rubbing off on you, but… it wasn't dread. It was more like…knowledge, a certainty that was gradually becoming more and more clear. Something was going to happen on the night of the initiation. _

_He screamed your name when they came for him. He screamed for you as they dragged him away._

_You stared into the darkness as you heard him scream around the gag in his mouth. You heard the scream turn dark and metallic, and you knew that with each cut he was changing, changing in a way that was deep and unsalvageable. You felt the familiar nothingness of disloyalty. Just like the last time, the knife was in your hand. You saw your face reflecting off the blade. _

_Oh._

_It was a quiet sort of epiphany, but you were a quiet sort of person. _

_So __that__ was how you would keep your loyalty to him. __That__ was how you could serve the boy with the flower-necklaces and not the boy with the crushed scorpions. You would lock the darkness away, where it couldn't hurt him. _

_As you cut into your face, your hand was steady with your certainty._

But sometimes, sometimes his whispers with the darkness become arguments. Sometimes you hear fragmented thoughts and half-realized dreams about power and destruction and endless pain. And sometimes, you wonder if you're hearing both sides of the conversation.

Sometimes you lie awake in fear.

_Your certainty died the moment he first spoke to you. The eyes that opened after the ceremony did not belong to the boy with the flower necklaces. That boy was dead, bled out on the floor of a stone-cold chamber as an ancient symbol was carved into his back. This was some new boy, some third boy, not the light and not the darkness, nothing you could understand. _

_But you had sworn him your loyalty, and loyalty was all you were. _

_You would follow this strange, new boy, even if it meant both of your destruction._

_But when he drew a shaky breath and asked you 'Rishid, who should I hate?' you couldn't help but wonder if the answer was 'Me.'_

Sometimes it's the guilt that keeps you awake.

You're quiet, but you're not stupid. You know that what you're doing is wrong, and deep in your heart, you know he killed the man who was not your father.

You see that your unquestioning loyalty to his ever-increasing amorality is only serving to push him deeper into the darkness. He's sewn his clothes with razorblades, and when you hold him you only drive them deeper, one side into his chest, the other into your arms.

And yet somehow, impossibly, you don't care. For how else can you truly become his brother, if not by mixing your blood with his?

You know this with great certainty, and with the same certainty you know you cannot stop.

You are just as possessed as he is.

_You washed the blood from his hands the day he killed the man who was not your father. You kissed his hair and held him close and told him it would be alright. He cried and choked and sputtered against your chest and finally whispered 'Run.' _

_As he pulled you up the stairs and out the entrance that separated the tomb from the outside world, he spared a glance behind him. At Ishizu. At his father. _

_You didn't. You are his and his alone. _

Sometimes you lie awake because he comes to you in the night. You don't open your eyes, because you know he doesn't want you to see the tears on his cheeks. But you shift on the bed to make room for him, and he curls against your side at night and whispers his nightmares in your ear.

You drift to your dreams with the knowledge that, come morning, he will steal and enslave and kill again. He will succumb to his anger and hate for the Pharaoh and walk ever closer to the darkness. He will follow the unbending path towards his revenge.

And you will follow him, because you must. You will follow him because you know you cannot save him.

Sleep comes easier on nights like those.


End file.
